British Army during World War I: Map

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The British Army during World War I fought the
largest and most costly war in its long history. Unlike the
French and German Armies, its units were made up
exclusively of volunteers—as opposed to conscripts—at the outset of the conflict.
Furthermore, the British Army was considerably smaller than its
French and German counterparts.

The war also posed problems for the army commanders, given that
prior to 1914, the largest formation any serving General in the BEF
had commanded on operations was a division. The expansion of the army saw
some officers promoted from brigade to
corps commander in less than a year. Army
commanders also had to cope with the new tactics and weapons that
were developed. With the move from manoeuvre to trench warfare,
both the infantry and the artillery had to learn how to work
together. During an offensive, and when in defence, they learned
how to combine forces to defend the
front line. Later in the war, when the Machine Gun Corps and the
Tank Corps were added to the order of battle, they were also
included in the new tactical doctrine.

The men at the front had to struggle with supply problems; the
shortage of food and disease was rife in the damp, rat-infested
conditions. Along with enemy action, many troops had to contend
with new diseases: trench foot, trench fever and trench
nephritis. When the war ended in 1918, British Army casualties,
as the result of enemy action and disease, were recorded as 673,375
dead and missing, with another 1,643,469 wounded. The rush to
demobilise at the end of the war substantially decreased the
strength of the army, from its peak of 4,000,000 men in 1918 to
370,000 men by 1920.

Organisation

The British Army during World War I could trace its organisation to
the increasing demands of imperial expansion. The framework was the
voluntary system of recruitment and the regimental system, which
had been defined by the Cardwell
and Childers Reforms of the late
19th century. The Army had been prepared and primarily called upon
for Empire matters and the ensuing colonial wars. In the last years of the
nineteenth century, the Army was involved in a major conflict, the
Second Boer War (1899–1902), which
highlighted shortcomings in the Army's tactics, leadership and
administration. The Esher Report of
1904 recommended radical reform of the British army, such as the
creation of an Army Council, a General Staff, the abolition of the
office of Commander in Chief of the Forces, and the creation of a
Chief of the General Staff. The Haldane
Reforms of 1907 formally created an Expeditionary Force of
seven divisions, reorganised the volunteers into a new Territorial Force of fourteen cavalry brigades and fourteen infantry divisions, and changed the old militia into the Special Reserve to
reinforce the expeditionary force.

At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the British regular army
was a small professional force. It consisted of 247,432 regular
troops organised in four Guards
regiments and 68 line infantry regiments,
31 cavalry regiments, artillery and other support arms. Usually,
each infantry regiment had two regular battalions, one of which served at home and
provided drafts and reinforcements to the other which was posted
overseas, while also being prepared to be part of the Expeditionary
Force. Almost half of the regular army (74 of the 157 infantry
battalions and 12 of the 31 cavalry regiments) was stationed
overseas in garrisons throughout the British Empire. The Royal Flying Corps was part of the army
until 1918, and at the outbreak of the war consisted of 84
aircraft.

The regular Army was supported by the Territorial Force, and by reservists. In
August 1914, there were three forms of reserves. The Army Reserve
of retired soldiers was 145,350 strong. They were paid 3 Shillings and 6 pence a week (17.5 pence today) and had to attend 12 training days per
year. The Special Reserve had another 64,000 men and was a form of
part-time soldiering, similar to the Territorial Force. A Special
Reservist had an initial six months full-time training and was paid
the same as a regular soldier during this period; they had three or
four weeks training per year thereafter. The National Reserve had
some 215,000 men, and was a register maintained by Territorial
Force County Associations of all those who had military experience,
but who had no other reserve obligation.

The regulars and reserves totalled, on paper, a mobilised force of
almost 700,000 men, although only 150,000 men were immediately
available to be formed into the British Expeditionary
Force (BEF) that was sent to the continent. This consisted of
six infantry divisions and one of cavalry. By contrast, the French
Army in 1914 mobilized 1,650,000 troops and 62 infantry divisions,
while the German Army mobilized 1,850,000 troops and 87 infantry
divisions.

Britain, therefore, began the war with six regular and fourteen
reserve divisions. During the war, a further six regular, 14
Territorial, 36 Kitchener's Army
and six other divisions, including the Naval Division from the Royal Navy were formed.

The single cavalry division assigned to the BEF in 1914 consisted
of 15 cavalry regiments in five brigades. They were armed with
rifles, unlike their French and German counterparts, who were only
armed with the shorter range carbine. The
cavalry division also had a high allocation of artillery compared
to foreign cavalry divisions, with 24 13-pounder guns organised into two
brigades and two machine guns for each regiment. However, when
dismounted, the cavalry division was the equivalent of two weakened
infantry brigades with less artillery then the infantry division.
By 1916, there were five cavalry divisions, each of three brigades,
serving in France, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd divisions in the
Cavalry Corps and the
1st and 2nd Indian Cavalry Divisions in
the Indian Cavalry Corps, each
brigade in the Indian cavalry corps contained a British cavalry
regiment.

Over the course of the war, the composition of the infantry
division gradually changed, and there was an increased emphasis
upon providing the infantry divisions with organic fire support. By 1918, a British
division consisted of three infantry brigades, each of three
battalions. Each of these battalions had 36 Lewis machine guns, making a total of 324
Lewis guns in the division. Additionally, there was a divisional
machine gun battalion, equipped with 64 Vickers machine guns in four companies
of 16 guns each, and each brigade in the division had a mortar
battery with eight Stokes Mortars. The
artillery also changed the composition of its batteries. At the
start of the war, there were three batteries with six guns per
brigade; they then moved to four batteries with four guns per
brigade, and finally in 1917, to four batteries with six guns per
brigade to economise on battery commanders. In this way, the army
would change drastically over the course of the war, reacting to
the various developments, from the mobile war fought in the opening
weeks of the war to the static trench warfare of 1916 and 1917. The
cavalry of the expeditionary force represented 9.28 percent of the
army, but by July 1918 would only represent 1.65 percent. Infantry
would decrease from 64.64 percent in 1914 to 51.25 percent of the
army in 1918, while the Royal Engineers would increase from 5.91
percent to 11.24 percent in 1918.

British Expeditionary Force

Under the terms of the Entente
Cordiale, the British Army's role in a European war was to
embark soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which
consisted of six infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades that
were arranged into two Army corps: the
I Corps, under the command
of Douglas Haig, and the II Corps, under command of
Horace Smith-Dorrien. At the
outset of the conflict, the British
Indian Army was called upon for assistance; and in August 1914,
20 percent of the 9,610 British officers initially sent to France
were from the Indian army, while 16 percent of the 76,450 other ranks came from the British Indian
Army.

German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm,
who was famously dismissive of the BEF, issued an order on 19
August 1914 to "exterminate...the treacherous English and walk over
General French's
contemptible little army". Hence, in later years, the survivors of
the regular army dubbed themselves "The Old Contemptibles".
By the end
of 1914—after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres—the old regular British army had been effectively
wiped out, although it managed to stop the German
advance.

In October 1914, the 7th Division arrived
in France, forming the basis of the British III Corps, and the cavalry had
grown into its own corps of three divisions. By December 1914, the
BEF had expanded, fielding five army corps divided between the
First Army and the Second Army. As the Regular Army's strength
declined, the numbers were made up—first by the Territorial Force,
then by the volunteers of Field Marshal
Kitchener's, New Army. By the
end of August 1914, he had raised six new divisions, and by March
1915, the number of divisions had increased to 29. The Territorial
Force was also expanded, raising second and third line battalions
and forming eight new divisions, which supplemented its peacetime
strength of 14 divisions. The Third
Army was formed in July 1915, and with the influx of troops
from Kitchener's volunteers and further reorganization, the
Fourth Army and the Reserve Army, which became the
Fifth Army, were formed in
1916.

Recruitment and conscription

In August 1914, 300,000 men had signed up to fight, and another
450,000 joined by the end of September. Recruitment remained fairly
steady through 1914 and early 1915, but it fell dramatically during
the later years, especially after the Somme campaign, which
resulted in 360,000 casualties. A prominent feature of the early
months of volunteering was the formation of Pals battalions. Many of these pals who had
lived and worked together, joined up and trained together and were
allocated to the same units. The policy of drawing recruits from
amongst a local population ensured that, when the Pals battalions
suffered casualties, individual towns, villages, neighbourhoods,
and communities back in Britain were to suffer disproportionate
losses. With the introduction of conscription in January 1916, no
further Pals battalions were raised. As a result, conscription for single
men was introduced in January 1916, and four months later, in May
1916, it was extended to all men aged 18 to 41. The Military Service Act March
1916 specified that men from the ages of 18 to 41 were
liable to be called up for service in the army, unless they were
married (or widowed with children) or served in one of a number of
reserved occupations, which were
usually industrial but which also included clergymen and teachers.
This legislation did not apply to Ireland, despite its then status
as part of the United Kingdom (but see Conscription Crisis of 1918). By
January 1916, when conscription was introduced, 2.6 million men had
volunteered for service, and a further 2.3 million were conscripted
before the end of the war and by the end of 1918, the army had
reached its peak strength of four million men.

Commanders

In 1914, no serving British officer of the British Expeditionary
Force (BEF) had controlled a force larger than a division on
active operations. The first Commander in Chief of the BEF,
appointed in August 1914, was Field MarshalJohn French. His last active
command had been the cavalry division in the Second Boer War.

Of the two corps commanders at the beginning of the war, French had
remarked in 1912, that Douglas Haig, the commander of
the British I Corps, would be better
suited for a position on the staff than a field command. Like
French, Haig was a cavalryman, and his last active command had been
a brigade in the cavalry division during the Second Boer War. The
first commander of the British II
Corps was Lieutenant General James
Grierson, a noted tactician who died of a heart attack soon
after arriving in France. French wished to appoint Lieutenant General
Herbert Plumer
in his place, but against French's wishes, Kitchener instead
appointed Lieutenant General Horace
Smith-Dorrien, who had begun his military career in the
Zulu War in 1879 and was one of only five
officers to survive the battle of Isandlwana. He had built a formidable reputation as an
infantry commander during the Sudan
Campaign and the Second Boer War. After the Second Boer war, he
was responsible for a number of reforms, notably forcing an
increase in dismounted training for the cavalry. This was met with
hostility by French (as a cavalryman), and by 1914, French's
dislike for Smith-Dorrien was well known within the army.

French was eventually replaced in 1915, by Haig, who commanded the
BEF for the remainder of the war. He became most famous for his role as its
commander during the battle
of the Somme, the battle of Passchendaele, and the Hundred
Days Offensive—the series of victories leading to the German
surrender in 1918. Haig was succeeded in command of the
First Army by General Charles Carmichael Monro, who in
turn, was succeeded, in September 1916, by General Henry Horne, the only officer
with an artillery background to command a British army during the
war.

General Plumer eventually was appointed to command II Corps, in
December 1914, and he succeeded Smith-Dorrien in command of the
Second Army in 1915. He had
commanded a mounted infantry detachment in the Second Boer war,
where he started to build his reputation. He held command of the
Ypres salient for three years, and he gained an overwhelming
victory over the German Army at the battle of Messines in 1917. Plumer is generally recognised as
one of the most effective of the senior British commanders on the
Western Front.

Allenby was replaced as Third Army commander by General Julian Byng, who
began the war as commander of the 3rd Cavalry Division.
After performing well during the First Battle of Ypres, he was
given command of the Cavalry Corps. He was sent to the Dardenelles in August 1915, to command the British IX Corps. Byng planned the
highly successful evacuation of 105,000 Allied troops and the
majority of the equipment of the Mediterranean Expeditionary
Force (MEF). The withdrawal was successfully completed in
January 1916, without the loss of a single man. Byng had already
returned to the western front, where he was given command of the
Canadian Corps. His most notable
battle was the battle of Vimy ridge in April 1917, which was carried out by the
Canadian Corps with British support.

General Henry
Rawlinson served on Kitchener's staff during the advance on
Omdurman, in 1898, and served
with distinction in the Second Boer War, where he earned a
reputation as one of the most able British commanders. Rawlinson took
command of the British IV Corps in
1915, and then command of the Fourth
Army in 1916, as the plans for the Allied offensive on the
Somme were being developed. During the war,
Rawlinson was noted for his willingness to use innovative tactics, which he employed during the
battle of Amiens, where he
combined attacks by tanks with artillery.

General Hubert Gough commanded a
mounted infantry regiment with distinction during the relief of Ladysmith, but then, his
command was destroyed while attacking a larger Boer force in 1901.
When he joined the BEF, he was in command of the 3rd Cavalry
Brigade, and was promoted from a brigade to a corps command in less
than a year. In September 1914, he was given command of the
2nd Cavalry
Division; in April 1915, the 7th Division; and in
July 1915, the British I Corps which he commanded during the
battle of Loos. In May 1916, he was
appointed commander of the Fifth Army, which suffered heavy losses
in the battle of Passchendaele. The collapse of the Fifth Army was
widely viewed as the reason for the German breakthrough in the
Spring Offensive, and Gough was
dismissed as its commander in March 1918, being succeeded by
General William
Birdwood for the last months of the war. Birdwood had
previously commanded the Australian
Corps, an appointment requiring a combination of tact and
tactical flair.

Officer selection

In August 1914, there were 28,060 officers in the British Army, of
which 12,738 were regular officers, while the rest were in the
reserves. The number of officers in the army had increased to
164,255 by November 1918. These were survivors among the 247,061
officers who had been granted a commission during the war.

Most pre-war officers came from families with military connections,
the gentry or the peerage; a public
school education was almost essential. In 1913, about two
percent of regular officers had been promoted from the ranks. The
officer corps, during the war, consisted of regular officers from
the peacetime army, officers who had been granted permanent
commissions during the war, officers who had been granted temporary
commissions for the duration of the war, territorial army officers
commissioned during peacetime, officers commissioned from the ranks
of the pre-war regular and territorial army, and temporary officers
commissioned from the ranks for the duration of the war
alone.

In September 1914, Lord Kitchener announced that he was looking for
volunteers and regular NCOs to provide officers for the expanding
army. Most of the volunteers came from the middle class, with the largest group from
commercial and clerical occupations (27 percent), followed by
teachers and students (18 percent) and professional men (15
percent). In March 1915, it was discovered that 12,290 men serving
in the ranks had been members of a university or public school
Officers' Training Corps
(OTC). Most applied for, and were granted, commissions, while
others who did not apply were also commissioned. At the end of
1915, the army introduced a new system for recruiting officers that
guaranteed that the vast majority had served in the ranks.

Once a candidate was selected as an officer, promotion could be
rapid. A. S. Smeltzer, after serving in the Regular Army for 15
years, was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant in 1915. He rose in rank, and by the Spring of 1917,
he had been promoted to Lieutenant
Colonel and was commanding officer of the 6th Battalion,
The Buffs (Royal East Kent
Regiment).

Along with rapid promotion, the war also noticeably lowered the age
of battalion commanding officers. In 1914, they were aged over 50,
while the average age for a battalion commanding officer in the
BEF, between 1917 and 1918, was 28. By this stage, it was official
policy that men over 35 were no longer eligible to command
battalions. This trend was reflected amongst the junior officers.
Anthony Eden was the Adjutant of a battalion when aged 18, and served as
the Brigade Major in the 198th Brigade while
still only aged 20.

The war also provided opportunities for advancement onto the
General Staff, especially in the early days of the war, when many
former senior officers were recalled from retirement. Some of these
were found wanting, due to their advanced age, their unwillingness
to serve, or a lack of competence and fitness; and most were sent
back into retirement before the first year of the war was over,
leaving a gap that had to be filled by lower-ranking officers.
Criticism of the quality of staff work in the Crimean War and the
Second Boer War had led to sweeping changes under Haldane. The
Staff College, Camberley
was greatly expanded and Lord Kitchener established another
staff college at Quetta in
1904. Nonetheless, when war broke out in August 1914, there were
barely enough graduates to staff the BEF. Short four-month staff
courses were introduced, and filled with regimental officers who,
upon completing their training, were posted to various
headquarters. As a result, staff work was again poor, until
training and experience slowly remedied the situation. In 1918,
staff officers who had been trained exclusively for static trench
warfare were forced to adapt to the demands of semi-open
warfare.

During the course of the war, 78 British and Dominion officers of the rank of Brigadier-General and above were killed or
died during active service, while another 146 were wounded, gassed,
or captured.

Doctrine

British official historian Brigadier James Edward Edmonds recorded in 1925,
that "The British Army of 1914, was the best trained best equipped
and best organized British Army ever sent to war". This was in part
due to the Haldane reforms, and the
Army itself recognising the need for change and training. Training
began with individual training in winter, followed by squadron,
company or battery training in spring; regimental, battalion and
brigade training in summer; and division or inter-divisional
exercises and army manoeuvres in late summer and autumn. The common
doctrine of headquarters at all levels was outlined in the
Field Service Pocket Book, which Haig had introduced while
serving as Director of Staff Studies at the War Office in
1906.

The Second Boer War had alerted the army to the dangers posed by
fire zones that were covered by long-range, magazine-fed rifles. In the place of
volley firing and frontal attacks,
there was a greater emphasis on advancing in extended order, the
use of available cover, the use of artillery to support the attack,
flank and converging attacks, and fire and movement. The Army
expected units to advance as far as possible in a firing line
without opening fire, both to conceal their positions and conserve
ammunition, then to attack in successive waves, closing with the
enemy in a decisive attack.

The cavalry practised reconnaissance and fighting dismounted more
regularly, and in January 1910, the decision was made at the
General Staff Conference that dismounted cavalry should be taught
infantry tactics in attack and defence. They were the only cavalry
from a major European power trained for both the mounted cavalry
charge and dismounted action, and equipped with the same rifles as
the infantry, rather than short-range carbines. The cavalry were also issued with
entrenching tools prior to the
outbreak of war, as a result of experience gained during the Second
Boer War.

The
infantry's marksmanship, and fire and movement techniques, had been
inspired by Boer tactics and was established as formal doctrine by
Colonel Charles Monro
when he was in charge of the School of Musketry at Shorncliffe. In 1914, British rifle fire was so
effective that the Germans believed they were facing huge numbers
of machine guns. The Army concentrated on rifle practice, with days
spent at the rifle ranges dedicated to improving marksmanship and
obtaining a rate of fire of 15 rounds a minute at ; one sergeant
set the record of 38 rounds into a target set at in 30 seconds. In
their 1914 skill-at-arms meeting, the 1st Battalion Black Watch recorded 184 marksmen, 263
first-class shots, 89 second-class shots, and four third-class
shots, at ranges from 300 yards out to . The infantry also
practised squad and section attacks, and fire from cover, often
without orders from officers or NCO's, so that soldiers would be
able to act on their own initiative. In the last exercise before
the war, it was noted that the infantry made wonderful use of
ground advances in short rushes and always at the double and almost
invariably fires from a prone position.

Weapons

The British Army was armed with the Short
Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III (SMLE Mk III), which featured a
bolt-action and large magazine
capacity that enabled a trained rifleman to fire 20 to 30 aimed
rounds a minute.World War I accounts tell of British troops
repelling German attackers, who subsequently reported that they had
encountered machine guns, when in fact, it was simply a group of
trained riflemen armed with SMLE Mk III rifles.The heavy Vickers machine gun proved itself to be
the most reliable weapon on the battlefield, with some of its feats
of endurance entering military mythology. One account tells of
the action by the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps at
High
Wood on 24 August 1916. This company had 10
Vickers guns, and it was ordered to give sustained covering fire
for 12 hours onto a selected area away, in order to prevent German
troops forming up there for a counter attack while a British attack
was in progress. Two companies of infantry were allocated as
ammunition carriers, supplying rations and water for the machine
gunners. Two men worked a belt–filling machine non–stop for 12
hours, keeping up a supply of 250–round belts. They used up 100 new
barrels, and all of the water—including the men’s drinking water
and the contents of the latrine buckets—was
also used to keep the guns cool. In that 12–hour period the 10 guns
fired just short of one–million rounds between them. One team is
reported to have fired 120,000 from their gun. At the close of the
operation, it is alleged that every gun was working perfectly and
that not one gun had broken down during the whole period.

The lighter Lewis gun was adopted for land
and aircraft use in October 1915. The Lewis gun also had the
advantage of being about 80-percent faster—in both time and
component parts—to build than the Vickers gun had been; and it was
far more portable. By the end of World War I, over 50,000 Lewis
Guns had been produced, and they were nearly ubiquitous on the
Western Front, outnumbering the Vickers gun by a ratio of about
3:1.

The Stokes Mortar was rapidly
developed when it became clear that some type of weapon was needed
to provide artillery-like fire support to the infantry. The weapon
was fully man-transportable yet also capable of firing reasonably
powerful shells at targets beyond the range of rifle
grenades.

Finally, the Mark I tank, a British
invention, was seen as the solution to the stalemate of trench
warfare. The Mark I tank had a range of , without refuelling, and a
speed of three miles per hour; the Mark I tank first saw service on
the Somme in September 1916.

Infantry tactics

After the race to the sea, manoeuvre warfare gave way to trench warfare, a development for which the
British Army had not prepared. Expecting an offensive mobile war,
the Army had not instructed the troops in defensive tactics and had
failed to obtain stocks of barbed wire,
hand grenades, or trench mortars. In the early years of trench
warfare, the normal infantry attack formation was based on the
battalion, which comprised four companies that were each made up of
four platoons. The battalion would form 10
waves with between each wave, while each company formed two waves
of two platoons. The first six waves were the fighting waves from
three of the battalions companies, and the seventh wave contained
the battalion headquarters; the remaining company formed the eighth
and ninth waves, which were carrying waves expected to carry
equipment forward, and the tenth wave contained the stretcher
bearers and medics. The formation was expected to move forward at
the rate of every two minutes, even though each man carried his
rifle, bayonet, gas mask, ammunition, two
hand grenades, wire cutters, a spade, two empty sandbags and flares. The carrying platoons, in
addition to the above, also carried extra ammunition, barbed wire
and construction materials to effect repairs to captured lines and
fortifications.

By 1918, experience had led to a change in tactics; the infantry no
longer advanced in rigid lines, but formed a series of flexible
waves. They would move covertly, under the cover of darkness, and
occupy shell holes or other cover near to the German line. Skirmishers formed the first wave and followed
the creeping barrage into the German front line to hunt out points
of resistance. The second or main wave followed in platoons or
sections in single file. The third was formed from small groups of
reinforcements, and the fourth wave was expected to defend the
captured territory. All waves were expected to take advantage of
the ground during the advance. (see below for when operating with
tanks)

Each platoon now had a Lewis gun section and a section that
specialised in throwing hand grenades, and each section was
compelled to provide two scouts to carry out reconnaissance duties.
Each platoon was expected to provide mutual fire support in the
attack they were to advance, without halting; but leap frogging was accepted, with the
lead platoon taking an objective and the following platoons passing
through them and onto the next objective, while the Lewis gunners
provided fire support. Grenades were used for clearing trenches,
and each battalion carried forward two trench mortars to provide
fire support.

Tank tactics

The tank was designed to break the deadlock of trench warfare. In
their first use in the Somme, they were placed under command of the
infantry and ordered to attack their given targets in groups or
pairs. They were also assigned small groups of troops, who served
as an escort while providing close defence against enemy attacks.
Only nine tanks reached the German lines to engage machine gun
emplacements and troop concentrations. On the way, 14 broke down or
were ditched, and another 10 were damaged by enemy fire. In 1917,
during the battle of
Cambrai, the Tank Corps
adopted new tactics. Three tanks working together would advance in
a triangle formation, with the two rear tanks providing cover for
an infantry platoon. The tanks were to create gaps in the barbed
wire for the trailing infantry to pass through, then use their
armament to suppress the German strong points. The effectiveness of
tank–infantry cooperation was demonstrated during the battle, when
Major General George Montague
Harper of the 51st Division refused
to cooperate with the tanks, a decision that compelled them to move
forward without any infantry support; the result was the
destruction of more than a dozen tanks by German artillery sighted
behind bunkers. The situation had changed again by 1918, when tank
attacks would have one tank every or , with a tank company of 12 to
16 tanks per objective. One section of each company would be out
in front, with the remainder of the company following behind and
each tank providing protection for an infantry platoon, who were
instructed to advance making use of available cover and supported
by machine gun fire. When the tanks came across an enemy strong
point, they would engage the defenders, forcing them into shelter
and leaving them to the devices of the trailing infantry.

Artillery tactics

The artillery, prior to the war, no longer worked independently and
was taught to support the infantry to ensure a successful attack.
In 1914, the heaviest artillery gun was the 60-pounder gun, four in
each of the heavy batteries. The Royal Horse Artillery employed the
13-pounder gun, while the Royal
Field Artillery used the 18-pounder gun. By 1918, the situation
had changed, and members of the artillery were the dominant force
on the battlefield. Between 1914 and 1918, the Royal Field
Artillery had increased from 45 field brigades to 173 field
brigades, while the heavy and siege artillery of the Royal Garrison Artillery had
increased from 32 heavy and six siege batteries to 117 heavy and
401 siege batteries. With this increase in the number of batteries
of heavier guns, the armies needed to find a more efficient method
of moving the heavier guns around. (It was proving difficult to find the
number of draught horses required.)
The War
office ordered over 1,000 Holts Caterpillar tractors, which transformed
the mobility of the siege artillery. The army also mounted a
variety of surplus naval guns on various railway platforms to
provide mobile long-range heavy artillery on the Western
Front.

Until 1914, artillery generally fired over open sights at visible targets, and the largest
unit accustomed to firing at a single target was the artillery
regiment or brigade. One innovation brought about by the adoption
of trench warfare was the barrage—a term first used in orders for
the battle of Neuve
Chapelle in 1915. Trench warfare had created the need for
indirect fire, with the use of
observers, more sophisticated artillery fire plans, and an
increasingly scientific approach to gunnery, where artillerymen had
to use increasingly complicated calculations to lay the guns.
Individual guns were aimed so that their fall of shot was
coordinated with others to form a pattern; in the case of a
barrage, the pattern was a line.

The creeping barrage was a barrage
that lifted in small increments, perhaps , so that it moved forward
slowly, keeping pace with the infantry, who were trained to follow
close behind the moving wall of their own fire, often as close as ;
infantry commanders were encouraged to keep their troops as close
to the barrage as possible, even at the risk of casualties from
friendly fire. A creeping barrage
could maintain the element of surprise, with guns opening fire only
shortly before the assault troops moved off. It was useful when
enemy positions had not been thoroughly reconnoitred, as it did not
depend on identifying individual targets in advance. The idea
behind the creeping barrage was that the infantry should reach the
enemy positions before the defenders had time to recover, emerge
from shelters, and man their firing positions. On the first day of
the battle of the Somme, the
barrage outpaced the infantry, allowing the defenders to recover
and emerge from their dugouts, with
disastrous results for the attackers. The creeping barrage
demonstrated its effectiveness a year later, in 1917, during the
battle of
Arras. A weakness of the creeping barrage was that
the infantry was subordinated to the artillery schedule, while the
infantry commanders had less control over the tactical situation
and were therefore in danger of forgetting how to manoeuvre their
troops around the battlefield. The importance of the barrage was
such that traditional infantry tactics, including a reliance on the
infantry's own fire power to support its movement forward, was
sometimes forgotten.

Once the infantry had reached the German trenches, the artillery
shifted from the creeping barrage to the standing barrage, a
static barrage that would protect the infantry from counter attacks
while they consolidated the position. A variant was the box barrage, in which
three or four barrages formed a box—or more often three sides of a
box—around a position to isolate and prevent reinforcements being
brought up into the front line. This was normally used to protect
trench raids, although it could also
be used offensively against a German unit. Another type of barrage
was the SOS barrage, fired in response to a
German counter attack. An SOS barrage could be brought down by
firing a flare signal of a pre
arranged colour, as a German barrage tended to cut the telephone
lines. A pre registered barrage would then descend on No Man's
Land.

With the introduction of the Tank the artillery was no longer
required to aid the infantry by destroying obstacles and machine
gun positions. Instead, the artillery assisted by neutralising the
German artillery with Counter
battery fire. British Army researchers under LieutenantWilliam Lawrence Bragg developed
sound ranging, a method of determining
the location of a hostile artillery from the sound of its guns
firing. A Counter Battery Staff Officer (CBSO) was appointed at
each corps to coordinate the counter battery effort, collating
reports from sound ranging and Royal Flying Corps observers. By the
end of the war it was realised that the important effect of the
barrage was to demoralise and suppress the enemy, rather than
physical destruction; a short, intense bombardment immediately
followed by an infantry assault was more effective than the weeks
of grinding bombardment used in 1916.

Communications

The Royal Engineers Signal Service,
formed in 1912, was given responsibility for communications that
included signal dispatch, telegraph, telephone and
later wireless communications, from army
headquarters to brigade and down to battery level for the
artillery. For most of the war, the Army's primary methods of
communication were signal dispatch (employing runners, messengers
on horseback, dogs, and carrier
pigeons), visual signalling, telegraph, and telephone. At the
start of the war, the Army had a small number of wireless sets,
which—in addition to being heavy and unreliable—operated on
longwave. In 1915, trench wireless sets
were introduced, but the transmissions were easily intercepted by
the listening Germans.

Civilian telephones were used at the outset of the war, but they
were found to be unreliable in the damp, muddy conditions that
prevailed. Consequently, the field
telephone was designed: a device that operated with its own
switchboard. Apart from voice
communication, it featured a buzzer unit with a Morse code key, so that it could be used to send
and receive coded messages. This facility proved useful when, in
the midst of bombardment, exploding shells drowned out voice
communication. The telephones were connected by telephone lines
that sustained continual damage as a result of shell fire and the
movement of troops. The lines were generally buried, with redundant
lines set in place to compensate for breakages.

The primary types of visual signalling were Semaphore flags, lamps and flags, lamps and
lights, and the heliograph. In open
warfare, visual signalling (employing signal flags and the
heliograph) was the norm. A competent signaller could transmit 12
words a minute with signal flags (during daylight) and signal
lights (at night). Signal lights, which were secured in a wooden
case, employed a battery-operated Morse code key. These signalling
techniques had certain disadvantages, however. In trench warfare,
operators using these methods were forced to expose themselves to
enemy fire; and while messages sent to the rear by signal lights
could not be seen by enemy forces, replies to such messages were
readily spotted, and operators were, once again, exposed to enemy
fire.

During the war, the Army also trained animals for use in the
trenches. Dogs were trained to carry messages; and horses, mules,
and dogs were used to lay telephone and telegraph cables. Carrier
pigeons, who transported messages back from the front line, were
also carried along in tanks so that they could deliver messages
during an attack. Over 20,0000 pigeons and 370 handlers were used
during the war, and at times, they were the sole means of
communication.

Royal Flying Corps

At the start of the war, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in the Field,
commanded by Sir
David Henderson consisted of five squadrons—one observation balloon squadron (RFC No 1
Squadron) and four aeroplane squadrons (RFC No 2, No 3, No 4 and No
5 Squadrons). These squadrons were first used for aerial spotting
on 13 September 1914, but only became efficient when they perfected
the use of wireless communication at
Aubers ridge on 9 May 1915. Aerial photography was attempted during
1914, but once again, it only became effective the following year.
In August 1915, General Hugh Trenchard
replaced Henderson. The British use of air power evolved during the
war, from a reconnaissance force to a fighting force that attempted
to gain command of the air above the trenches and carry out bombing
raids on targets behind the line. The early aircraft of the RFC
were inferior to their German rivals; in April 1917, (Bloody April) the RFC lost over 300 aircrew and
245 aircraft. Not until late 1917, with the introduction of the
Sopwith Camel and the S.E.5, were they able to
compete successfully for control of the air.

On 17 August 1917, General Jan Smuts
presented a report to the War Council concerning the future of
air power. Given its potential for
the 'devastation of enemy lands and the destruction of industrial
and populous centres on a vast scale', he recommended a new air
service be formed that would be on a level with the Army and Royal
Navy. The formation of the new service, however, would make the
under utilised men and machines of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS)
available for action across the Western
Front, as well as ending the inter-service rivalries that at
times had adversely affected aircraft procurement. On 1 April 1918,
the RFC and the RNAS were amalgamated to form a new service, the
Royal Air Force (RAF). The RAF was
under the control of the new Air
Ministry. By 1918, photographic images could be taken from
15,000 feet and interpreted by over 3,000 personnel. Planes did not
carry parachutes until 1918, though they
had been available since before the war.After starting in 1914 with
some 2,073 personnel, the RAF had 4,000 combat aircraft and 114,000 personnel by
the beginning of 1919 .

Corps of Royal Engineers

On 1 August 1914, the Royal Engineers consisted of 25,000 officers
and men in the regular army and reserves; by the same date in 1917,
it had grown to a total manpower of 250,000.In 1914, when the BEF
arrived in France, there were two Engineer field companies attached
to each infantry division, which was increased to three companies
by September 1914. Each division also had a Signals company, which
was responsible for communications between Corps, Division and
Brigade headquarters.

The Engineer Tunnelling Companies were formed in response to the German blowing of 10 small mines in December 1914, at Givenchy. The first British mine was blown at Hill 60 on 17 February 1915.Mining was used increasingly during the battle of Aubers ridge in May 1915, and the battle of Loos in September 1915; and in July 1916, on the first day of the battle of the Somme, what became known as the Lochnagar Crater was created by a blown mine at La Boisselle. Twenty-one companies were eventually formed and were employed digging subways, cable trenches, Sapping, dugouts as well as offensive or defensive mining. At the end of the war, the Engineer's were directly responsible for maintaining buildings and designing the infantry front-line fortifications and artillery positions, the telephones, wireless and other signalling equipment, railways, roads, water supply, bridges and transport; they also operated the railways and inland waterways.

Machine Gun Corps

In September 1915, the Machine Gun
Corps (MGC) was formed to provide heavy machine-gun teams,
after a definite proposal was made to the War Office for the
formation of a single specialist machine-gun company for each
infantry brigade—a goal to be achieved by withdrawing guns and gun
teams from the battalions. Created in October 1915, the MGC
consisted of infantry machine-gun companies, cavalry machine-gun
squadrons, and motor machine-gun batteries. In the trenches, the
Corps' guns were deployed with an interlocking field of fire and
proved to be a devastating defensive weapon against attacking
infantry. They were also used in an indirect fire support role, in
which they fired over the heads, and from the flanks, of the
advancing infantry and behind the German trenches, to stop
reinforcements and supplies from getting to the front.

Tank Corps

The Tank Corps, formed as the
Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps in 1916, tanks were used
for the first time in action in the battle of the Somme on 15
September 1916, the intention was they would crush the barbed wire
for the infantry then cross the trenches and exploit any
breakthrough behind the German lines. In November 1916, they were
renamed the Heavy Branch M.G.C. and in June 1917, the Tank
Corps.

Originally formed in Companies of the Heavy Branch MGC, designated
the companies as A, B, C and D, each company of four sections has
six tanks three male and three female versions, with one tank held
as a company reserve. In November 1916, each company was reformed
as a battalion of three companies, with plans to increase the Corps
to 20 battalions, each Tank Battalion had a complement of 32
officers and 374 men.

In the first mass tank attack of the war at the battle of Cambrai,
476 tanks started the attack, the German front collapsed and by
midday the British had penetrated five miles behind the German
line. By the battle of Amiens the value of the tank was appreciated
and ten heavy and two light battalions of 414 tanks were included
for the assault, 342 Tank Mark
V's and 72 Whippet tanks
they were backed up by a force of 120 tanks designed to carry
forward supplies for the tanks and infantry, by the end of the
first day the attack had penetrated the German line by six to eight
miles and 16,000 prisoners had been captured.By September 1918, the
British Army was the most mechanized army in the world. Some 22,000
men had served in the Tank Corps by the end of the war.

Army Service Corps

The Army Service Corps (ASC)
operated the transport system to deliver men, ammunition and
materials to the front. From 12,000 men at the start of the war the
Corps increased in size to over 3,000,000 by November 1918. In
addition they had under command Indian, Egyptian, Chinese (Chinese Labour Corps) and other native
labourers, carriers and stores men. They provided horsed transport
companies, mechanical transport companies, the army remounts
service and ASC Labour companies. In August 1914, they delivered
4,500,000 pounds of bread, to the front which had increased to
90,000,000 pounds by November 1918.

Life in the trenches

Trench construction diagram from a
1914 British infantry manual

By the end of 1914 the war on the Western Front had reached
stalemate and the trench lines extended from the Belgian coast to
the Swiss frontier. By September 1915, the length of the British
front line stretched for some . Soldiers were in the front or
reserve line trenches for about eight days at a time, before being
relieved.

There were three trenches in the front line; the fire trench, the
support trench and the reserve trench, all being joined by
communication trenches. The trenches varied in depth, but they were
usually about four or five feet deep, or in areas with a high
water table they built a wall of
sandbags to allow the defenders to stand upright, the fire trenches
were provided with a fire step, so the occupants could return fire
during an attack (see diagram). Ideally the bottom of the trench
was lined with duckboards to prevent men
from sinking into the mud and dugouts were cut into the walls for
living in, these gave shelter from the elements and shrapnel, but
in the British Army dugouts were usually reserved for the officers
and the senior NCO's. The men were then expected to sleep wherever
they could and in wet weather they lived under ground sheets or in
tents on the bottom of the trench on the duckboards.

At the front soldiers were in constant danger from artillery
shells, mortars and bullets and as the war progressed they also
faced aerial attack. Some sectors of the front saw little activity
throughout the war, making life in the trenches comparatively easy.
Other sectors were in a perpetual state of violent activity.
However, quiet sectors still amassed daily casualties through
sniper fire, artillery fire and disease, the
harsh conditions, often wet and muddy and the constant company of
lice, and rats which fed on unburied bodies, often carried disease.
Food could not usually be cooked in the front line trenches as any
smoke would draw enemy fire, and hot food had to be carried up
communication trenches in clumsy "hayboxes", sometimes arriving
late or not at all. Disease was rife in the damp, rat infested
conditions, with many troops suffering from trench foot, trench
fever and trench nephritis. They
suffered frost bite in the cold winter
months and heat exhaustion in the summer and the men were
frequently wet and extremely muddy, or dry and exceedingly
dusty.

Daily routine

The daily routine of life in the trenches began with the morning
'stand-to. An hour before dawn everyone was roused and ordered to
man their positions in order to guard against a dawn raid by the
Germans. With stand-to over, it was time for the men to have
breakfast, wash and go to the toilet. Once this had been completed
the NCO's would assign daily chores, before attending to the
cleaning of rifles and equipment, filling sandbags, repairing
trenches or digging latrines. Once the daily chores had been
completed the men who were off duty would find a place to sleep.
Due to the constant bombardments and the sheer effort of trying to
stay alive, sleep deprivation was
common. Soldiers also had to take it in turns to be on sentry duty,
watching for enemy movements.

Given that each side's front line was constantly under watch by
snipers and lookouts during daylight, movement was therefore
restricted until night fell and after the dusk stand-to. Under the
cover of darkness troops attended to vital maintenance and
resupply, with rations and water being brought to the front line,
and fresh units swapped places with troops returning to the rear
for rest and recuperation. Trench
raiding was also carried out and construction parties formed to
repair trenches and fortifications, while wiring parties were sent
out to repair or renew the barbed wire
in no man's land. Then an hour before
dawn, everyone would stand-to again.

Move into the front line

There was a set procedure for a division that was moving into the
front line. Once they had been informed that they were moving
forward, the brigadiers and battalion commanders would be taken to
the forward areas to reconnoitre the sections of the front that
were to be occupied by their troops. Meanwhile, the battalion
transport officers would be taken to the headquarters of the
division that they were relieving in order to observe the methods
used for drawing rations and ammunition, and the manner in which
they were supplied to the troops at the front. Detachments from the
divisional artillery group would move forward and were attached to
the artillery batteries of the division they were relieving. Five
days later, the infantry battalions that were destined for the
front line sent forward their specialists from the Lewis gun teams,
the grenade officer, the machine gun officer, the four company
commanders, and some of the signallers to take over the trench
stores and settle into the trench routine before the battalions
moved in. Overnight, the battalions would move into the line, and
the artillery would take over the guns that were already in
position, leaving theirs behind to be taken over by the batteries
that had been relieved.

Western front

Under the command of Field Marshal Sir John French,Pearce &
Stewart (2002), pp. 289–290 the BEF began to deploy to France
within days of the declaration of
war. The first encounter with the Germans came at
Mons on 23 August
1914, after which the Allies began the Great Retreat, during which the BEF was
involved in the battle of Le
Cateau. The BEF had a small role in halting the German
advance at the Marne,
before participating in the Aisne counter-offensive, in
September which was followed by a period known as the "Race to the Sea" during which the BEF
redeployed to Flanders. For the BEF, 1914
ended with "First
Ypres" which marked the beginning of a long struggle for
the Ypressalient. British
casualties in the fighting between 14 October and 30 November were
58,155 (7,960 dead, 29,562 wounded and 17,873 missing). It is often
said that the pre war professional army died at the first battle of
Ypres. The army had arrived in France with 84,000 infantry. By the
end of the battle of Ypres, the BEF had suffered 86,237 casualties,
mostly to the infantry.

Trench warfare prevailed in 1915 and
the BEF, as the junior partner on the Western Front, fought a
series of small battles, at times coordinated with the larger
French offensives: the battle
of Neuve Chapelle which is always associated with the shell crisis, the battle of Aubers Ridge and the
battle of Festubert in May and
the battle of Givenchy in June.
On 22
April 1915, the Germans launched the second
battle of Ypres, employing poison gas for
the first time on the Western Front and capturing much of the high
ground that ringed the salient. By September 1915 the
British Army had grown in strength, with the first of Kitchener's
New Army divisions entering the line, and as part of the third battle of Artois, the Army
launched a major attack the battle of
Loos utilising its own newly developed chemical weapons for the
first time. The resulting failure marked the end for Field Marshal
French. On 19 December 1915, General Sir Douglas Haig replaced him
as Commander in Chief of the BEF.

For the British Army, 1916 was dominated by the battle of the Somme
which started disastrously on 1 July. The first day on the Somme remains the
bloodiest day in the history of the British Army when over 19,000
soldiers were killed and a nearly 40,000 were wounded, all for
little or no gain. The only real success was in the south
where, using imaginative tactics and helped by the French, the
18th Division and 30th Division took all their
objectives, including Montauban, and the 7th Division captured
Mametz.At
Thiepval the 36th
Division seized the Schwaben Redoubt but was forced to withdraw because of lack of
progress elsewhere.There followed nearly five months of
attrition during which the Fourth
Army of General Henry Rawlinson and the Fifth Army of General
Hubert Gough advanced an average of at a cost of 420,000
casualties.

British machine gunners fire on German
aircraft near Arras

In
February 1917 the German Army began to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line and it was these formidable
defences that elements of the British Army assaulted in the
battle of
Arras in April. For this battle, the British
Prime Minister,
David Lloyd George, had placed
Haig and the BEF under the orders of new French Commander-in-Chief,
Robert Nivelle who planned a major
French Army offensive in Champagne. When the battle officially
ended on 16 May, British troops had made significant advances, but
had been unable to achieve a major breakthrough at any point.
Having failed to deliver a breakthrough and Haig, now embarked on
his favoured plan to launch an offensive in Flanders. In a successful preliminary operation,
General Herbert Plumer's Second Army seized the Messines
ridge south of Ypres. The battle of Passchendaele,
which began on 31 July 1917, was one of the worst ordeals endured
by British and Dominion forces during the
war, with the battlefield reduced to a quagmire. It was not until 6
November that the Passchendaele ridge was captured, by which time
the British Army had sustained 310,000 casualties.For the British
Army 1917, ended with the battle of Cambrai which demonstrated the
potential of tanks operating en masse.
Third Army commander, General Julian Byng, planned an ambitious
breakthrough and achieved an unprecedented advanced of on the first
day but lacked the reserves to either continue or consolidate. A
German counter-offensive succeeded in recapturing most of the lost
ground.

The final year of the war 1918, started with disaster and ended in
triumph. On 21 March 1918, German General Erich Ludendorff, launched the Spring Offensive and the main weight of the
first blow, Operation
Michael, fell on the British Fifth Army of General
Gough which was forced into retreat, finally halting the German
advance on the Marne in June
1918. The next German attack came south of Ypres in the
battle of the Lys river and here
too the British Army fell back. Haig issued his famous Order of the
Day, "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of
our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end." In response to
the crisis facing the Allies, French general Ferdinand Foch was made Supreme Commander for
Allied forces on the Western Front, placing the BEF under his
strategic direction.On 8 August 1918, General Rawlinson's Fourth
Army launched the battle of
Amiens which marked the start of the Hundred Days Offensive, the final
Allied offensive on the Western Front. Over the following weeks,
all five armies of the BEF went on the offensive from the Somme to
Flanders. Fighting continued right up until the Armistice with
Germany came into effect at 11.00 am on 11 November 1918.

In the final offensive, the BEF captured 188,700 prisoners and
2,840 guns which was only 7,800 prisoners and 935 guns less than
those taken by the ,French, Belgian and American armies combined.

Other campaigns

China

British troops arrive at Tsingtao
1914

In 1914,
the British Army was involved in what became know as the Siege of Tsingtao when the 2nd Battalion
South Wales Borderers landed
in China in support of Japanese forces in the capture of the German port of
Tsingtao. The British were part of a 23,0000 strong
task force which included a mixed British–Indian Brigade of 1,500
troops and the British battleship, HMS Triumph. A bombardment of the port
started on 31 October 1914, and by 7 November 1914, the Japanese
18th Division and 29th Infantry Brigade, and the British–Indian
Brigade, had stormed and captured the garrison and its 4,000
troops.

The casualty rate amongst British and Empire troops, excluding the
Africans, was 6,000 dead and 3,000 wounded. More troops died from
diseases than from enemy action, and illness accounted for 70
percent of the total casualties.

Mesopotamia campaign

The British Army force fighting in Mesopotamia was principally drawn from the
British Indian Army, with only one solely British formation, the
13th Division. Its objective was to
secure the Royal Navy's oil supply from
Persia. On 7
November 1914, the British Indian force, led by General Sir
John Nixon, invaded
Mesopotamia, and on 23 November, they entered Basrah. After this initial invasion, there followed a
disastrous and humiliating defeat of the British by the Turks at
the Siege of Kut-al-Amara,
from 7 December 1915 to 29 April 1916, when the entire garrison of
13,000 British and Indian troops surrendered. The British
reorganised and raised the number of available troops to 250,000.
The British eventually regained momentum upon General Frederick Stanley Maude becoming
commander, and a new British offensive began in December 1916.
On 24
February 1917, Kut-al-Amara fell to the joint British and Indian
force, and Baghdad was captured in March 1917. A week after the
capture of Baghdad, General Maude issued the Proclamation of Baghdad, which
contained the famous line, "our armies do not come into your cities
and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators".
After
General Maude's death from cholera on 18 November 1917, he was
succeeded by Lieutenant General Sir William Marshall,
who continued with the River War until October 1918, when
the British captured the Mosul oil fields,
a development that led to the collapse of the Turkish
forces. The Armistice of
Mudros with Turkey was signed on 30 October 1918. During the
campaign, there were 100,000 British and Indian casualties. Of
these, 53,000 died, with 13,000 of the dead succumbing to
disease.

Gallipoli campaign

Turkey had entered the war on the side of the Germans on 31 October
1914. One
its first acts was to close the Dardanelles Straits to the Allies.In April 1915,
following the failure of the Royal Navy's attempt capture the
Dardanelles, the British and ANZAC forces
landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, under the command of General Ian
Hamilton. The main British attacks were the first, second and the third
battle of Krithia. These were a series of attacks
against the Turkish defences aimed at capturing the original
objectives of 25 April, 1915. They all failed to achieve their
objectives. In August, another landing was made at Suvla Bay. The Suvla landing was
reinforced by the arrival of the 10th Division from Kitchener's
New Army, the 53rd, and the 54th first-line Territorial divisions
and the dismounted yeomanry of the 2nd Mounted Division. The
29th Division was also moved
from Helles to Suvla for one more push. The final British attempt
to resuscitate the offensive came on 21 August, with attacks at
Scimitar Hill and Hill 60. Control of these
hills would have united the Anzac and Suvla fronts, but neither
battle achieved success. When fighting at Hill 60 ceased on 29
August, the battle for the Sari Bair heights, and indeed, the
battle for the peninsula, was effectively over, and by January
1916, the Allies had
withdrawn.

Estimates of casualties vary enormously, but of the around 480,000
Allied troops involved in the campaign, 180,000 were wounded and
44,000 died, 20,000 of the dead being British.

Army reinforcements were moved into Dublin and by 28 April, the
1,600 rebels were facing 18 to 20,000 soldiers, the rising was
suppressed after seven days of fighting, and its leaders were
court martialled and executed.The
Easter Rising casualties were 450 killed, 2,614 injured, and nine
missing, almost all in Dublin. The only significant action elsewhere was at
Ashbourne, north of Dublin. Military casualties were
116 dead, 368 wounded and 9 missing, and the Irish and Dublin
police forces had 16 killed and 29 wounded and 254 non combatant
civilians died.

Salonika campaign

A new
front was opened in Salonika at the request of the Greek government,
intending to support Serbian forces and oppose Bulgaria. The first troops of the British Salonika Army arrived in
Salonika in October 1916, too late to prevent the Serbian Army from
retreating into Albania and Greece. French, British and Russian
troops arrived in Salonika between 1916 and 1917 and became known
as the Army of the East or the Army of the
Orient, under the overall command of French General Maurice Sarrail. With the objective of
destroying the Bulgarian Army, the French and British launched a
new offensives in April 1917, without any significant success. A
stalemate ensued without any movement by either side and the front
became known as Europe's biggest internment camp for the
Allies by the Germans.This situation lasted until 18 September
1918, when the British and Greek Armies, under the command of
General George Milne attacked in the Lake Doiran Sector. The Bulgarian Army, now in retreat
signed an armistice on the 30 September
1918.

Italian campaign

Italy joined the war on the Allies' side on 5 May 1915, declaring
war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May
1915 and on Germany on 28 August 1916. The British Army's
involvement in the Italian campaign started much later, in late
1917, when British troops were sent to help prevent a collapse on
the Italian front. On 24 October 1917 in the battle of
Caporetto the Second Italian Army collapsed and the Italians
were forced to retreat to the Piave River, where they could be reinforced with five British
Divisions and six French Divisions from the Western Front, complete
with supporting arms and commanded by General Herbert Plumer.The reinforced
Italians the successfully managed to halt the Austro-Hungarian
advance at the battle of the Piave river.During the Allied counter attack in October
1918, the Austro-Hungarian Army collapsed after taking heavy losses
at the battle of
Vittorio Veneto. An armistice was signed shortly after on 3
November 1918.

Fighting the Senussi Arabs

In late
November 1915, in response to the growing threat from a pro-Turkish
Islamic Arab sect known as the Senussi, a
composite British force known as the 'Western Frontier Force' was
sent into the Libyan
Desert to Mersa
Matruh, under the command of British Indian Army officer
Major General Alexander Wallace. A series of sharp battles
against the Arabs ensued at Um Rakhum, Gebel Medwa, and Halazin
during December and January. The Western Desert Force, now under Major
General William Peyton, re-occupied
Sidi
Barrani and Sallum in
February and March 1916. Shipwrecked British seamen from HMT
Moorina and HMS Tara, who had been held at Bir
Hakeim, were rescued by a force of armoured cars led by the Duke of
Westminster.

Sinai and Palestine campaign

The Sinai
and Palestine Campaign was fuelled by criticism of the policy of a
static defence of the Suez
Canal, which employed six infantry divisions and five
mounted brigades. After the repulse of the Turkish First Suez Offensive, nine divisions
were sent to the Western Front and one to Mesopotamia.

Murray
made steady progress against the Turkish forces, which were
defeated in the battle of
Romani, the battle of
Magdhaba and the battle of Rafa. However, he was repulsed at the first and second battle of Gaza in 1917.
The
defeat in the Second Battle of Gaza prompted the War Office to change the command of the EEF, and on 28 June
1917, Murray was replaced by General Sir Edmund Allenby, who
reinvigorated the campaign.

In
February and April 1918, Australian mounted troops took part in two
raids east across the Jordan River near Es Salt, a village in
Palestine west of Amman.
Although these raids were unsuccessful, they encouraged Turkish
commanders to believe that the main British effort would be
launched across the Jordan, when in fact it would be launched along
the coastal plain. The EEF was greatly weakened at this time by the
crisis in France, which led to the despatch of the 52nd and 74th
Divisions to the Western Front, the breaking up of the Yeomanry
Mounted Division, and the replacement of most of the British
infantry in four of the remaining divisions by Indian troops.
However in September 1918, Allenby's forces won the decisive
Megiddo Offensive, which
precipitated the Armistice of
Mudros with the Ottoman Empire, which was signed on the 31
October 1918.

Total Allied casualties in the Sinai and Palestine campaign were
60,000 of which 20,000 were killed. Some 15,000 of the dead were
British.

Aftermath

The British Army during World War I was the largest military force
that Britain had put into the field up to that point. On the
Western Front, the BEF ended the war as the strongest fighting
force, more experienced and bigger than the American Army and with
better morale then the French Army.

The cost of victory was high. The official "final and corrected"
casualty figures for the British Army, including the Territorial
Force, were issued on 10 March 1921. The losses for the period
between 4 August, 1914, and 30 September, 1919, included 573,507
"killed in action, died from wounds and died of other causes" and
254,176 missing (minus 154,308 released prisoners), for a net total
of 673,375 dead and missing. Casualty figures also indicated that
there were 1,643,469 wounded.

The Ten Year Rule was introduced in
August 1919, which stipulated that the armed forces should draft
their estimates "on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any
great war during the next ten years." In 1928, Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
successfully urged the Cabinet to make the rule self perpetuating
and hence it was in force unless specifically countermanded. There
were cuts in defence spending as a result of this rule, with
defence spending falling from £766 million in 1919–1920, to £189
million in 1921–1922, and to £102 million in 1932.

The British Army tried to learn the lessons of World War I, and
adopt them into its pre war doctrine. In the 1920s and much of the
1930s the General Staff tried to establish a small, mechanised,
professional army, and formed the Experimental Mechanized Force,
but with the lack of any identified threat, the Army's main
function reverted to garrison duties around
the British Empire.